live TV goofs

Ed Begley (Sr.) once told the story of how he played the villain in a live production. At the climax, he is fighting the hero on a construction site. They near the edge. He picks up a wrench and swings. The hero ducks and the force of the swing sends Mr. Begley falling 90 stories to his death. Of course, the set was only 6 feet high, and they placed 3 feet of mattresses, so he only falls 3 feet. Everything went perfectly during rehearsals. Broadcast night he hit the mattresses and bounced back into camera range.

But throughout it all, my motto was "Dignity! Always dignity!".

Ernie Kovacs had the opposite problem. He was playing Mr. Wizard doing simple science tricks for a rotten kid. He wanted to show that, by putting a lit candle in a milk bottle and putting an egg at the neck of the bottle, a vacuum would be created and the egg sucked into the bottle. Five times during rehearsals, it didn't work, so they had dialog with the kid sneering at Mr. Wizard. Showtime, and they put the candle in the bottle and the egg at the neck, and SHOOM! the egg got sucked right into the bottle. Ernie and the kid just gaped.

I heard of an incident on early Australian TV series At Seven on 7 (1956), where Howard Craven was interviewing a cartoonist who drew a comic strip. The cartoonist draw a picture, and the interviewer commented that he saw the character every day in the comic strip. The cartoonist replied that the character never appeared on any comic strip, that the character was one he just made up.

Oops.

But the biggest goof happened in the 1970s, the Graham Kennedy "crow call" incident...

The Johnny O'Keefe Show doll...wind it up and it makes a comeback

Your Craven interviewer reminds me of a Steve Allen remark, which I can vouch for because I have the tape. Steve came out at the beginning of the show and asked the audience "How many of you saw our show last week?" The audience applauded and Steve said "Good. We weren't on last week."

I remember John Cameron Swayze, a nationally known newsman at the time, advertising Timex watches on The Steve Allen Show.

He strapped a Timex on the propeller of a boat motor and started the motor to show the watch would keep on ticking. The watch watch was promptly thrown off the propeller and sank to the bottom of the glass tank. He just laughed and told the audience, "You'll have to believe me, the watch is still running." Maybe used the Timex advertising phrase at the time: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking."

In the Broadway show Mary, Mary, the estranged couple are fondly remembering the early days of their marriage, and particularly one night when they sat up 'til all hours watching movies on TV. The commercials were done live, and the announcer was apparently up past his bedtime. He took a deep drag on the sponsor's cigarette, exhaled slowly and said "Man, that's real coffee."

I worked for a local TV/Radio combination that was owned by ABC. In the early days, they had "staff announcers," who had glorious voices, and read commercial tags, ID the station, did the "please stand by ... due to circumstances beyond our control" messages, and did the sign-off after "Sermonette." Mostly, they weren't seen. But, occasionally, they performed live commercials.

One of the old-timers told me of a beer commercial that he did live every weekday, on a given show. The client was very particular about the label of the bottle facing the camera at all times, and the precision with which the beer was to be opened, and poured into the glass.

Of course it had to happen, at some point ...

Things were hectic, one day. The "floor manager" had forgotten to place the bottle just-so, on the set table - it was a union rule that HE had to do it. Larry started the commercial, looking directly into the camera for his intro, looked down to see no bottle. Another staff member grabbed one and threw it to him. He caught it, opened it ... and there was beer everywhere.

He said that the client was either out of town, or had a sense of humor, after all -- he didn't cancel.

Zoo Parade, with Marlin Perkins, was the live predecessor of Wild Kingdom. Every Sunday afternoon, Marlin was at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago showing off one of the animals. One show, a half dozen keepers came onstage grasping a 20' python. As Marlin explained something, the snake suddenly crapped all over the hand of the keeper holding it at that spot. While Marlin kept a straight face, all the zoo keepers (but one) were biting their lips trying to stifle explosions of merriment.